Dhrupad Festival of Classical Indian Music

Wednesday 2:05 p.m., March 18th, 2009
Jaipur Rajasthan

At last night’s Dhrupad Festival of classical Indian music, I was blessed to hear some outstanding pakhawaj drumming by two excellent players: Mohan Sharma (the teacher of my friends Vasant and Tulsi), and Devaki Nandan, a man Shyamdas described as possibly the finest pakhawaj player in all of India (which is to say, the world). I recorded it, and did a little bit of wide open snaffling on video as well, which I’ll post either to the blog (if the generally atrocious upload experience ever improves) or on the Dharma site later after my return to the land of clean air. Great stuff!

Interestingly, the instruments most associated with Indian music in the west, tabla and sitar (and more recently harmonium), are considered modern devices and not suitable for a classical music event like I just attended. So here it was more about the sarod, sarangi, pakhawaj, the veena—some of these instruments have so many strings in so many places, I’m not sure I could ever even learn to tune them! But man, they sound amazing, trance-inducing in their magnificence…

(still no pics uploading, sigh)